LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES

Part of Goldsmiths College, New Cross, was occupied 26th February – March 5th 1999. 300 students took over college admin building, after eight students were expelled because they couldn’t pay £1000 a year tuition fees that had been imposed on them. A court granted the college an eviction order, but the occupying students refused to leave till the eight reinstated. A few weeks previously, students had held a demonstration, blocking New Cross Road outside, over same issue.

The occupiers wanted the letters of expulsion to be replaced by advice on funding for the fees from the university authorities.

The students also called for a commitment from the college that “no student should be excluded due to an inability to pay fees” and that the student union should be informed 10 days before a letter of expulsion is sent to a student.

The protest drew the solidarity of many folk outside the College, including Comedian Rob Newman, who performed a free show within the occupied building at Goldsmiths, attended by 500 students, and bands Silver Sun and Jolt, who played gigs there in support.

The occupation ended on March 5^th, after a meeting of students on the Friday evening, following the High Court order. Student leaders claimed the occupation as a victory, saying that the threat of expulsion for non-paying students had been lifted, and that the university authorities promised better communication with the students’ union in future.

The Goldsmiths’ protest was part of a wave of occupations at universities including Oxford, Sussex and University College London.

Looking for ways to promote further protests in the autumn, a national conference of students involved in protests against the fees was held and a “think-tank” – the Education Funding Society – was set up to develop arguments against the principle of charging fees. Goldsmiths students also published a ‘Rough Guide to Occupations’.

Many of the 1999 student protestors come from the generation of young people who were first-time voters in the New Labour landslide election victory of 1997, but who now questioned the government’s commitment to well-funded education system.

“I voted Labour to get out the Tories, but they haven’t made enough use of their majority. They had the entire country behind them, but they didn’t push up spending in education as much as they could,” said the union’s finance officer, Denis Fernando.

The students argue not only that the current levying of fees will deter the less-advantaged from entering higher education, but there is a long-term move towards a two-tier university system.

They claimed that in future fees would rise, particularly in the most successful universities, so that access to the most sought-after places would depend as much on money as ability; and that the downgrading of the principle of free tuition would see a move towards greater involvement of private finance in higher education, with a business-sponsored private university sector emerging.

The 1999 anti-fees protests proved to be foresighted, as tuition fess were raised across the board and increased massively. The 1999 occupations foreshadowed the much larger student agitation of 2010-111, which saw hundreds of occupations and massive demos which led to fighting with the police, the takeover of the Tory HQ at Millbank, a run-in with prince Charles…

A few days after the Goldsmiths occupation ended, another college occupation started, at Camberwell College of Art (a couple of miles away), in protest at lack of tutors, equipment, space, grants and hours of access, college management used various methods to harass them, including bogus fire alarms, threats to prosecute, turning off heating & hot water. 8 students involved were later taken to court by the College authorities.

Goldsmiths was also occupied several times in 2009-2010 during the mass student agitation against tuition fees… in 2013 and 2015

and more recently, in 2019 there was the Goldsmiths Anti Racist occupation…

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An entry in the 2015 London Rebel History Calendar

Check out the 2015 London Rebel History Calendar online